How To Send and Receive Bitcoin, Ethereum & Other Cryptocurrency – How To Guide For Beginner’s Guy
2018-02-12T23:15:57+00:00

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How to Send and Receive Cryptocurrency

It’s easy to send and receive Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. It may sound complicated, but essentially it involves copy and pasting a code from one digital wallet to another. Without the ability to easily send and receive, cryptocurrency would be deemed useless.

The only difference between sending and receiving Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is the address, the process is exactly the same. We will use Bitcoin as an example. How Bitcoin transactions work is another matter for another post.

This guide will cover the following:

Finding your Bitcoin address

How to receive Bitcoin

How to send Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency is increasing in popularity faster than ever, with rapidly rising prices and volatile down turns happening on a regular basis, the market is starting to attract mass media attention. Most notably Bitcoin, being the first cryptocurrency of thousands, it’s price soared over 1,300% throughout 2017, dropping over 60% in the first month of 2018.

Bitcoin is popular because it allows anyone to invest! As long as you have access to the internet, you can buy bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency. Traditionally it was hard for the average ‘Joe’ to invest in stocks, shares or high interest funds. You don’t need a broker to buy Bitcoin, it’s available to everyone and anyone can send and receive Bitcoin.

It’s completely peer to peer, with no centralised power or authority. There’s nobody to step in and hold your funds against your will as there is with traditional payment systems.

Now let’s learn how to send and receive bitcoin and other cryptocurrency.

How to Send and Receive Bitcoin

How To Find Your Wallet Address

A wallet address is simply a string of randomly generated characters that’s unique to your wallet. To find it you must first have a wallet. There are many different wallets you can use, desktop wallets, mobile wallets, hardware wallets, online wallets and more, but for the purpose of this guide let’s assume you’ve already got a wallet.

The address will in most cases be found by pressing on ‘Receive Bitcoin’ in your wallet’s interface.

It usually comes in the form of a QR code too for ease of sending, but if you’re transacting online you’ll need the code.

The below example is the mobile IOS version of the online Blockchain Wallet which can be used for Bitcoin and Ethereum

How To Receive Bitcoin

Now you’ve found your wallet address, it’s time to receive Bitcoin.

Copy the address and send it to the person sending you the Bitcoin. They need the address so the blockchain knows where to send the Bitcoin to. A few minutes after they’ve sent the Bitcoin to your address, you should see the transaction appear in your wallet. Depending on how congested the blockchain is, it may take longer, in some case it can be a few hours, and very rarely it may take a few days. In most cases though it should appear within a matter of minutes.

Before you can use the Bitcoin, it usually shows as pending in your wallet while the transaction is properly authorised and confirmed. When sending to an exchange this usually takes slightly longer so bear in mind when sending to certain places you may have to wait for it to be confirmed.

How to Send Bitcoin

To send Bitcoin, first open your wallet. Just like when you found the address by pressing ‘receive Bitcoin’, you simply press instead ‘Send Bitcoin’.

You’ll need the address of the wallet you’re sending to.

Warning: Only send Bitcoin to a Bitcoin address! Any other cryptocurrency will in most cases be unrecoverable and lost forever. Bitcoin addresses always begin with 1. Ethereum addresses always begin with 0x.

Paste in the Bitcoin address you’re sending to.

Next enter the amount you need to send, either in Bitcoin, eg. 0.0152 BTC, or you can enter the amount in your local fiat currency.

Always bear in mind that transaction fees apply. The fees are always fluctuating so each time you send the fee will vary. When the network is congested, fees will be higher. In December the average Bitcoin transaction fee was around $30, now they’ve decreased and at the time of writing the cost to send £100 worth was just £0.07 which is the lowest they’ve been in for over a year.

Before pressing the send button, make sure you check the following:

The address corresponds with the one you need to send to

You’re sending the correct cryptocurrency to the correct address

You trust the receiver. When sent, there is no way of reversing the transaction

Now that you’re happy, press send.

Now that you know how to send and receive Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, you’re part of the growing revolution that’s gearing up to transform the financial world. Good luck and stay safe!

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